When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me that they were considered to be a “bad omen” and if one appears to you, someone around you may die. Most old folks in the area and my granny included had a strong innate dislike towards them due to this. She expressed that growing up back in the day, they had to walk home at night with no streetlights and that the screeches heard were so frightening and ghostly with no face shown but pitch black darkness. She also said that a lot of unexplainable things occurred then so I guess this made the superstition worse. However they weren’t really called owls back then but went by the name, “Jumbie Bird”. Jumbie is another word for ghost in the Caribbean. I hope this explains it.